Abubakar Rimi: A Political Falcon Falls

By

Isa Muhammad Inuwa

ismi2000ng@yahoo.com

Like a maddening blow, news of the untimely death of renowned political maestro and former Governor of old Kano state, Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi at late hours of Sunday night, April 4, 2010 stunned many Nigerians with blood-cuddling and nerve-chilling shocker, to a point of near unbelief. The openly jovial and crowd-fuller Abubakar Rimi, who until few hours to his death, was last seen hilariously bubbling with life and energy on the occasion of conferring staff of office to the Emir of Dass, Alhaji Usman Bilyaminu Usman, which the late political giant went to grace.

When the news broke, many people who had just recently seen or heard Rimi speak, held back their breath with unbelievable astonishment. However, as believers in God The Almighty, the natural law of providence demonstrates that living beings are palpably going on daily extinction. It was also written in the divine scriptures that “every soul must taste death”. Hence, we all later came to our true senses and embraced the incident whole heartedly.

A conspicuously standing out political colossus of his time and man of dogged and undaunted valour, Rimi’s main trade mark was always saying the truth point blank, no matter whose ox is gored. He could ever be remembered for the speech he delivered few days to his death, in which he roundly lambasted the action by Honourable members of the Senate, who approved Vice President Jonathan Goodluck as Acting President, refuting that no clause in the constitution, of which “I was one of the people who drafted it in 1977-1978, including its subsequent various reviews, no where it was stated that the Assembly men or the Senators could appoint an Acting President”, he challenged.

Until his death, the life history of late Abubakar Rimi was punctuated with struggles, encounters and of course, indelible marks of achievements. Born some 70 years ago, late Muhammad Abubakar was said to have curved his niche as a young and vibrant politician of the progressive and radical extraction. He was reported to have joined the Northern Element Progressive Union NEPU political party. After having earlier served various administrative posts, he joined full-time politics and became member of the Peoples’ Redemption Party, PRP, whereby he served as member of the Constituent Assembly between 1977 and 1978. He was later nominated by late Malam Aminu Kano, as gubernatorial candidate on the platform of PDP. Late Abubakar Rimi’s four-year tenure as the first civilian Governor of the defunct larger Kano state, which included the present Jigawa state, his time was full of rapid socio-economic growth as well, laced with a range of dicey, but recollectable socio-political turmoil.

On the platform of his “Talakawa” the (masses) based political party PRP, his administration cancelled personal tax and cattle tax, which were the major concern of the generality of the grassroots, with immediate effect. In 1980, Rimi’s administration established the Triumph Newspapers, the first ever and still surviving Newspaper outfit owned by a Northern state Government. The City Television station (CTV), was later established in 1982 by late Governor Alhaji Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi. His regime is also remembered for electrifying all major towns and villages of former Kano state, through the Rural Electricity Board. He did the same thing with water supply, through the Water Resources and Construction Agency, WRECA. Of course, other sectors such as Agriculture, Education and Health got equal boost and improvement during late Rimi’s tenure as Governor of Kano state. His surviving projects are till today, tangible living witnesses to testify his tremendous contributions to humanity. It also went to his credit that he sponsored many health specialists and Doctors whom Kano is still proud of having.

Similarly, on July 10, 1981, the horrifying “Kano Riot” took the center stage, with heavy casualty of burnt-down Government property in the Triumph Newspapers and Kano Radio station, as well as the assassination of the vocal and radically-intonned Dr. Bala Muhammad, who was hated by some people, for his high-toned political sermons and utterances in the media. Another major crisis came in the form of cleavage in the PRP ruling party into two factions – The “Tabo” faction comprised of followers and adherents of the old order, under late Malam Aminu Kano, while the “Santsi” factionalists were loyalists and followers of neo-radical group under Governor Abubakar Rimi.

Other portfolios held by late Rimi included Chairman on the Nigerian Agricultural and Commercial Bank, NACB, from August 1993 to November 1993. From November 1993 to February 1995, he was appointed as Nigeria’s Minister of Communications. He was Chairman of the Nigeria’s Security Printing and Minting Company from 2000 to 2002. It should be borne in mind that in spite of all these accolades of appointments, Rimi all along, retained his nature of saying the truth and confronting untruthful forces. It was during the controversial bid by Late President Sani Abacha to switch from military to civilian President that Rimi was seen by the authorities as threat and he was jailed along with others of the like minds, who challenged the gimmicks of Abacha.

With the death of President Sani Abacha in 1998, Rimi and his colleagues gained their freedom and immediately formed a radical 18-men group, the G-18, which grew to G-47. This group was the genesis of the formation of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, PDP, which till today, is the Nigeria’s ruling party. Even-though he was a founding member of the PDP of which he was denied Presidential ticket to contest in 1999 elections, his forbearance to continue as loyal member of the party did not end well between him and President Olusegun Obasanjo, who, having got fed-up with Rimi’s undying radicalism, decided to frustrate Rimi out of the party, through his (Obasanjo’s) cronies. With the ouster of Obasanjo and the usher of Yar Adua as President, Rimi bounced back into PDP, from the Action Congress, AC party he joined in the interim. He therefore remained a staunch member of the PDP, the political party he mid-wifed, up till his death.

I heard some people saying that Rimi died “in action”, that is to say, he continued and maintained his revolutionary and radical posture as from his youth-hood up till his elderly days and his subsequent death. This is very much rare with many people. The fact is that majority of people tend to soft-pedal and become less active as they grow older and pass through range of official and political posts. For late Rimi, he grew even more vibrant as his days pass on. What surprised me most was the unprecedented mammoth of crowd that turned out to witness his funeral on Monday, July 5, 2010, including housewives under the “purdah” – some peeped through windows of their storey buildings, others came out to the front of their houses to join in sympathy, the passing crowd of mourners.

I asked one of my interviewees that why in more than 20 people I interviewed; none of them uttered anything negative about Rimi? Were all the negativities we used to hear in the radio a mere hoax or what? The man responded that all those negativities were either political onslaughts or mere hearsay. “You know, many babblers would always speak things that they haven’t confirmed or seen it really happened. That’s our nature”, he concluded. There and then also a person who said he was close to late Abubakar Rimi, attested to me that one day, they discovered that Rimi’s house electricity generator was not put on. They later learnt that it was lacking fuel, of which Rimi lacked the money to purchase. Another testimony came from his colleague, who told him (and he later told me) that one day, it was only 2 days to Eid-El-Adhha, Rimi was fighting his Bank manager to approve him loan to purchase rams for himself and those he used to give. I therefore further confirmed the saying that “one is only praised on the day he dies” or when he passes away.

Another tragic reminder about late Rimi’s life was the assassination of his late wife, Hajiya Sa’adatu Rimi, a crime of which is yet to be investigated and punished accordingly. The initial arrests made and accusations made on some suspects had turned out to be a sheer diversionary set-up or a market drama. Sa’adatu was assassinated four years before Rimi’s death, who himself died in a very mysterious and questionable circumstance. According to some views, it was just not enough to tell the world that Rimi died of heart attack from encounter with highway robbers. In ideal situations, corpses of such important personalities dying in odd situations had to undergo postmortem. Likewise, it ought to be investigated whether the so-called robbers are real robbers or professional killers who might have silently and fastidiously injected or infested late Rimi with some deadly, poisonous element.

This is a similar situation with late Sheikh Ja’afar Mahmoud Adam who clocked three years after his assassination, which still remains a mystery and culprits still undisclosed by the security agencies. The list of questionable deaths of many other prominent personalities in Nigeria could go on and on. Yet neither disclosure nor punishment had ever been meted on the perpetrators. Are we rather waiting for God’s punishment, which is by multiple folds harsher? We are fully aware of attempts wipe out or delete the remembrance of exemplary personalities from the hearts of the people. This is done by organizing other diversionary occasions or gatherings during anniversaries of heroes’ and heroine’s remembrance. But nay, we shall forever continue to remember these heroes and martyrs of ours, as no amount of deception or intrigue would make us forget them. We would continue to remember them, write about them, cherish them and emulate their ways, till the end of time.